By Patric Hedlund

Volunteers at Green Dragon Farms in Frazier Park were munching home-baked corn muffins and making plans for their new organic community farms venture at the monthly meeting Sunday, June 5.

Baby lettuce, potato starts, broccoli, maize and beans were waiting for "magic fingers" to cultivate and transplant them, while the group of about 14—including a toddler and a young teen with a yo-yo—briskly covered business items.

Among those was the news that founder Linda Robredo has won a $25,000 Ella Lyman Cabot grant to help with the start up and equipment costs for this effort. Green Dragon’s shopping list includes a "smart greenhouse" for $6,000 and a used John Deere compact tractor. The grant will underwrite their 501(c)3 incorporation costs and pay for insurance. The TriCounty Watchdogs have been serving as cofounders and the fiscal sponsors. Ace Hardware donated lumber for the raised garden beds int he first site.

Robredo is working with Kern County’s Planning Department so garden patches can be placed on vacant lots throughout the Mountain Communities. The first site is on Los Padres Drive, next to Robredo’s Blue Rose Pet Salon. Volunteers say the next may be behind the Assembly of God Church and another is planned for Cuddy Valley. Their new phone number is 245-3000.

After the brisk business meeting, those magic fingers went to work transplanting baby lettuce into raised garden beds.

This is part of the June 10, 2011 online edition of The Mountain Enterprise.

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